Saying Hello
by ChronicallyinFlaming
Summary: Written for mass kink meme. After the war, Liara brings their Asari daughter to meet a hospitalized Shepard for the first time.


**The Prompt:**

_Liara/MShepard Say Hello_

_I found this pic on Deviantart:_

_Hospitalize Shepard who is unconscious and Liara bringing their Asari daughter to meet Shepard for the first time._

_So give me angst please :)_

_Bonus points for Shepard waking up to see his daughter for the first time._

**The fill:**_  
_

* * *

Liara no longer saw the pity in the nurses' eyes as she entered his room. For one, the struggling bundle strapped to her chest made it difficult to pay attention to anything but wandering tiny blue hands. Already, she had Shepard's determination and her mother's curiosity. She'd known intellectually that raising a child would stir up memories and empathy with her own mother, perhaps a new fondness for the color yellow, but this newfound respect for the woman who'd raised her was a surprise.

Amazing that she'd gotten to this age at all, really.

She ran a free hand over Shepard's face, straightening an eyebrow. His stumble was getting long again, and he'd grown pale in this room despite the lamps and windows letting in positioned sunlight.

The cuts had long since healed, or faded to scars. A new bandage from the latest surgery crossed the old scar on his scalp, the one she kissed with every visit. His hair too was thinner than normal, shaved to an even finer fuzz.

Unafraid, their daughter reached for his nose, his mouth. Pushing up his lips to show white teeth and pink gums, perfectly groomed. Seeking, always.

"This is Shepard. Do you remember the stories your Uncle Garrus and Aunt Tali told you?" Still, the baby explored that face, perhaps searching for her own features. "And never mind what Aethyta said. He saved your mother more times than I can count. He's been sick for a year now. If sick is the word for it. He was hurt fighting. Saving the entire galaxy from the Reapers."

"This is your father."

She had his eyes, Liara realized. More than just the shade of dark blue, but the shape. And his mouth, perhaps in time. Hannah had told her numerous time and shown her the vids of little John Shepard, crawling, teething, wailing, being bathed by his own father. John's father had been dead for over ten years now, and she and John's mother had never spoken of that fact. He'd had the same crazy grin, even when his mouth was fully of baby teeth. Strange, to feel such satisfaction looking at the child he'd been and knowing what he'd grow up to be.

Hannah Shepard, who'd been so surprised by the asari showing up to introduce herself formally when the human woman had returned to Earth. To see her son and help with other repairs. Shocked, and mildly disbelieving when hearing that she and her son were friends—and with her eyes trailing down to Liana swollen stomach, she'd asked exactly what the asari was doing here, _exactly_.

Even now, she winced. "I wanted you to know that-" Your son got me pregnant. Just before he went to fight Reapers and we found him…"That I am carrying John's daughter."

In time, Hannah managed out a complete statement. "Are you saying I'm already going to be a grandmother? No, sit down, and do you want something to drink, coffee—what am I saying, no, you shouldn't drink coffee. Sit down, god, you're pregnant. God. Oh my god, you're pregnant, this is wonderful!"

Only with her own father had she mentioned her fear of her daughter not having a father, of never knowing him beyond what others would tell her. Only this still figure in the bed.

Of course he didn't move. What had she been expecting? For him to wake up, just as when she'd found herself pregnant and standing here before his bed, telling him aloud of this fact? For him to finally wake up during her childbirth? When would come the time to just admit it fully, that he would not awake, had not awakened to comfort her as she wept when first seeing him, to wrap an arm (that was thinner than ever) around her shoulders and brush off the stares of the sympathetic nurses, to now snap awake and smile at her. I promised everything would be okay.

_I've waited. I will wait for so long. _

His eyebrows were lighter, browner than the hair on his head. She'd nearly forgotten that. And the lines in his forehead that were smoothed from lack of animation. Those model ships he'd had in his room on the Normandy were here, along with many cards and flowers that had to be regularly dusted and cleaned and watered. Liara had more in her own house, gifts given from others and ones she'd found herself in that brief time where she'd known,_ known_ to the marrow of her bones that he would wake up after this latest surgery.

His body had been handed off to Cerberus, an organization now destroyed. Miranda had tried to find information, to bring any biologist who had the skill, to no avail. But it had been her to pass him off, only to push him away, initially after Cerberus had brought him back to life. She'd pushed him away after those two years, but he had waited, and waited with a patience that she now loved, until they could be together. For so long they'd been apart…until he'd come to Mars to save her once again. Their brief time on the Normandy, where she was sure they would die at any time and had still kept him at arm's length. Now the asari saw herself in her apartment on the Citadel, clean and full of the belongings of her family, saw herself before her daughter's birth, perhaps stroking her stomach and looking at those toys. _He will like this. And that fish tank. _

Liara tried to imagine her life without him. Nine hundred years. Could not.

What if they'd met through some other chance, a different life? One without Reapers. They'd met at her dig site, him with some important information. Or them in calm banality, at the bank, him as handsome in a suit as armor, and still not clean-shaven. Smiling and asking if she had a spare pen he could borrow since his omni-tool wasn't working. Or at a club, a bar she would stumble into, them brought together through a kinder fate. Trips to things like the movies, in the Mako, because it was still _John_. Shepard not worn down by having to hold the galaxy together. _Ours friends arranged blind dates. We met through both studying protheans together._ Laugh lines in that forehead and them together in a proper bed without death breathing down their backs. Growing old(er) together as so many couples were able to.

Together.

_Shepard, we should have had this time together._

_It isn't fair,_ she wanted to cry out, holding their child. A prayer she'd spoken many times before, raging or weeping over losing him again, losing him a little more every day. Every tear stung and was hidden from the baby. A cleaner death might have been more merciful than this half-life. Their daughter would never know this man, would never be able to associate her father with anything other than this hospital and the machines that cared for him. Pictures and stories were how she would learn of him.

Had she still hoped, dreamed, that seeing his daughter for the first time might awake him? Like a myth or story she'd read as a child. Was that why she'd waited to bring their daughter here, to exist in some limbo state between reality and a fantasy? With every surgery that failed, every day that passed with no change, Liara could feel him sliding away. This is what the Savior of the Galaxy got, in the end. What so many others had receiving in this fight.

Their union, their connection, was being broken. If not for their child, she would be dying alongside Shepard. She was the Shadow Broker still, and helped now only with repairing. Everything was slowly healing, but for the person that had allowed them to do so.

Liara T'soni finally said aloud, "This is your father. And he is dying."

_I will have to let him go. There would be no time together, free of the war_. It had taken everything from them. _You are leaving me again, Shepard. Permanently. _

_I am still waiting. _

_Even when your body is finally gone, and we can all admit you are dead, I will still wait. And I don't mind, because you waited for me. An eternity, for you Shepard. _

He'd beaten so many odds, but in the end, John Shepard was a mortal man.

Her daughter was too young and full of life for Liara to pull away from her bondmate. Perhaps she only thought he was sleeping, like when she and her mother shared a bed. Liara could nearly feel those fingers she knew even better than her own on her face. Those blue fingers yanked at his upper lip with her father's strength.

The only one who wasn't surprised by those blue eyes fluttering open was their daughter who goggled down at the groggy man.


End file.
